Half a century ago, Nepal was a popular stop on the “hippie trail” of thousands of backpackers who came to smoke cannabis in the middle of the Himalayas. Now, authorities are considering going back to those times by decriminalizing marijuana.
At the time, Kathmandu attracted thousands of fun-loving youngsters who bought potent hashish variants from government-licensed shops on “freak street,” named after long-haired and disheveled foreign visitors.
But the United States’ global war on drugs and the pressure it exerted on foreign governments led to the closure in 1973 of these businesses in the capital and a ban on the cultivation of ganja, the Hindi term for cannabis.
Now that Western governments are making the use of this psychotropic more flexible, both the government and activists in Nepal believe that the time has come to stop criminalizing this century-old crop that is deeply rooted in the country’s culture and religion.
Corruption and smuggling
“It is not justifiable that a poor country like ours should treat cannabis like a drug,” Health Minister Birodh Khatiwada told AFP.
“Our people are being punished (…) and corruption is increasing due to smuggling because we have obeyed the decisions of developed countries that now do what they please,” he protests.
Khatiwada promoted the first parliamentary motion in Nepal advocating ending the ban in January 2020. Two months later, a law to MPs seeking partial legalization was presented to MPs.
A change in government has stalled progress although, in December of that year, Nepal backed a campaign for the United Nations to remove cannabis from its list of the world’s most harmful drugs.
Nepal’s Ministry of Home Affairs has launched a study on the medicinal properties and export potential of marijuana that should support a new parliamentary bid to end the ban.
“It’s a medicine,” says prominent activist Rajiv Kafle, who has HIV and began advocating for legalization after using the substance to treat his symptoms.
Kafle says ending the ban would be a “major boost” to Nepal’s tourism industry, still reeling from the pandemic, and would benefit those with chronic illnesses.
Although current law allows medical cannabis, there is no established framework for its therapeutic use and the government still enforces a blanket ban on its use and sale.
“There are so many patients taking it, but they are forced to do it illegally,” says Kafle. “They can catch them at any time,” she adds.
Enforcement of the ban is already somewhat disparate. Tourists are rarely bothered about lighting up a joint in a Kathmandu alley.
And every year, Kathmandu’s Pashupatinath temple is engulfed in clouds of aromatic smoke as holy men fill their pipes with Shiva’s “gift.”
But in the rest of the cases, the punishments are harsh and habitual. Marijuana traffickers risk 10 years in jail and police seize and destroy thousands of cannabis plants in the country every year.
part of our culture
The ban interrupted a long tradition of marijuana cultivation in Nepal, where the plants grow wild and their stems, leaves and resins are used for food, as a textile material or as a component of traditional Ayurvedic medicine.
“The ban destroyed an important source of income in this region,” says a farmer in the eastern district of Dang, asking to remain anonymous. “He didn’t know how much of it is part of our culture and our daily lives, not just as a drug,” he adds.
In recent years, several countries around the world have legalized marijuana, including parts of the United States, which led the global war on drugs decades ago.
In California, dispensaries sell “Himalayan Gold,” a variant from Nepal that recalls the country’s historic link to weed culture.
A new marijuana trade, tailored to growing export demand and taking advantage of the “international brand value” enjoyed by Nepal, could prove very lucrative, said Barry Bialek, a doctor who works at a cannabis research center in Nepal. the University of Kathmandu.
“As a cash crop it can be good locally, but also on the world market,” he told AFP. “You can be a leader in the world.”
